Ransom X

by I.B. Holder

  *****

  Agent Brent had to repeat every third word he spoke into his headset. Sitting near enough to the bikers that he couldn’t shout, he kept an efficient cadence and military structured communication pattern through the crackling connection back to Washington.

  It wasn’t the overcast skies or even the accompanying pressure drop before a storm that interfered with his satellite unit; it was most likely it was some kind of magnetic content in the rocks. It was only a hundred years past that these ranges had produced a rich variety of ores for a nation with a growing appetite for silver place settings, gold for rotting teeth, and, later, uranium to ensure a quick death for anyone who tried to take the gold or silver away. Most people think that the magnetic charge somehow interferes with the signal, and this is not the case. Each phone has an identifying chip that allows linkage to a series of communication satellites. It’s this chip that changes the equipment from an extremely expensive receiver (like a radio) into a communication device.

  Brent heard each of Wilkes’ excited words perfectly clearly, however, getting his position back to Wilkes took a gymnastic exercise of speech, the long program, minus the medals and leotards.

  Wilkes didn’t know that his side of the conversation was perfectly clear, and he yelled into the receiver, “There are four units on the way on the ground. One will be in the air in forty minutes, and the entire area can be contained by dawn. Copy.”

  “We have two agents in the field, we might have to move before containment.” Brent didn’t want to wait.

  “Say again.”

  “Agents in field, 6 pm deadline for Laura approaching.” He spoke in packets.

  “Laura’s broadcast has been delayed, tell your agent he has more time – hold.”

  Thoughts raced through Brent’s head, Blade had never gone off schedule. What did this mean? It was two minutes to six. Had Legacy interfered with the execution? If so, he should probably take down the men in the corner, it would at least satisfy his need to deal out some punishment. If the bartender would only get off the damn phone go in the back, he could probably shoot all of them – calculated, painful chronic injuries they’d take with themselves to the chair. With no witnesses, he could contend it was in self-defense.

  A flood of narrative from Wilkes interrupted his thoughts of revenge, pouring like salt water onto an open wound.

  “Blue just entered the frame - he’s dragging Laura in by her neck. She’s in a wig. Move your resources, agent. He’s putting her in arm restraints – oh, Christ.”

  Brent shouted. “What?”

  “He’s showing a knife to the camera. Move your resources! Now!”

  Brent hadn’t been able to make clear the fact that he had no communication with either of the agents in the field. He was as helpless as any other viewer to the atrocity. Wilkes’ usual rock solid tone began to crack, barking orders to others around him. Moments passed, as the voices in the background rose in a loud commotion.

  The words, indistinct, washed over the airwaves, occasionally popping out like a rusty nail in a clamoring construction site. Brent didn’t care much for drama. He’d once been dragged to a theater production of Pirates of Penzance by a fresh faced theater major. Brent had found himself earnestly wishing that the boat would sink, all hands on deck. Brent had a no tolerance policy for non-participants – he lived real action and couldn’t understand anyone who pretended to play a part. Wilkes voice woke him from a bad daydream and slammed him head first into nightmare.

  “OH, GOD!” His voice rattled the earpiece, then eerie silence. “It’s over.”

  Brent cast his eyes around the barroom wildly. He wanted so badly to lash out at something. He was met only with dubious stares of the bikers who had begun to pay attention to the agent’s behavior.

  Wilkes continued, clinically, “Her back’s to the camera, we can’t see the wound, but the volume of blood indicates a cut artery, she’s limp in the restraints.” His voice found a hollow reserved for those who thought they’d seen it all, only to find one gutting image left. “Never seen a girl – it’s over, wait for backup agent.” He murmured in a stupor, “Seen a hundred men die -”

  Agent Brent disconnected, he didn’t want to hear that last part, he didn’t want to hear any of it. He surged from his chair, he didn’t know what he was going to do, but it involved payback and the men in the corner. He took one step in their direction and his phone rang. He stood like a stone monument to indecision in the middle of the bar. The bikers studied him like he was somehow familiar – categorized but not identified, yet. One of them took the time to sneer and blow smoke menacingly from nostrils.

  He didn’t want to hear another word, but his sense of duty ran deeper than his vein of retribution, just barely. He pushed a button on the phone and was more than a little surprised at the hushed, disturbingly familiar voice that came across the line.

  “I’m calling to report - I’ve been calling but I couldn’t get through, but now I am.”

  “How did you get the number?” Brent demanded.

  “Well, I got this number from a girl agent –” the voice sighed, struggled to be understood like he believed cops spoke a different language “She told me to call”

  Brent noticed the slight echo, doubling the sound of his breath and it clicked for the young agent, he turned to the bar. Brent locked eyes with the man on the other end of the phone. The bartender slouched over the phone, hiding the receiver in a thick hand. Brent closed the distance between them in brisk steps, reached across the bar, his fingers reaching for the phone, disconnecting the surprised bartender. He picked up the conversation face to face without skipping a beat.

  “What did she say?”

  Burly took the sudden shift in his customary way, chewed and digested the strange turn of events like it was part of human nature. He’d seen enough strange human nature in his days that this agent appearing in front of him provided only the opportunity to deliver his message.

  “You got here fast.”

  “Where is Agent Wagner?”

  “She went up the back trail to the old church camp- little while ago.”

  His slow country drawl caused Brent visible discomfort in a time when every tick of the clock seemed to bring a fresh crisis. Burly couldn’t tell what nerve he was tapping into, so Brent courteously decided to bring him closer to examine the problem face to face. He grabbed the bartender by the shirt and pulled him across the bar with a sudden jolt. Burly’s feet scuffed around wildly searching for the ground. Brent knew he was pressing hard, too hard, and he knew it but he couldn’t stop himself. Wagner was at risk.

  “When?”

  A rumble that Brent originally mistook for a massive gastric belch escaping the fat man’s stomach erupted in the night air. It was joined by another rumble, amplified again and again. It was the sound of engines churning to life.

  The men in the corner were gone.

  Brent bolted for the door. He was outside, a wall of yellow light was aimed at the door and he squinted, staring into a row of three headlights and what struck him immediately wasn’t surprise. It was the flat, ridged grip of the gun stamped in the center of his forehead, propelled by the arm of the fat one. He was quick for a man carrying at least twice the natural weight for his frame. This lightning strike to the forehead was called the stare down, for the way it blurred the vision of the man who was hit. It was evidently the fat one’s signature move.

  “My signature move.” Mac told the teetering agent in a chummy tone.

  Brent didn’t black out, but the sudden concussion on the visual cortex made him completely incapable of fending off attackers.

  Blade usually took over when they were helpless, but tonight there were several things that didn’t go according to plan.

  “Why didn’t he go down, Mac?”

  Mac was just as surprised, “They always go down.”

  Sean didn’t want a chat, “Pop him and let’s go.”

&
nbsp; Vorest stepped forward and put a fist into the gut of the teetering man. His hand crunched, at first he thought it was the ribs of the man he was hitting, and a smile came to his face, but it disappeared in an instant of realization. Fist running full force into Kevlar on a cold night meant something was going to go crunch, and it wasn’t going to be the Kevlar. It was like punching a concrete wall.

  “Fucking A, my hand!” he searched the recesses of his dark mind to find the perfect word to express the moment, there it was, just where he’d left it moments before, “FUCK!”

  Mac stepped in with another blow aimed at Brent’s forehead, but this time he was ready. Even though he blinked a blurry cocktail of blood and saline from his eyes, Brent rolled his head backwards. It was a good guess, the butt of the gun skidded off of his hairline.

  Brent’s training kicked in and somehow as he rolled on the wooden porch, he found two semi-automatic glocks in his hands as he pushed himself into a crouching position. Now the only question was: where to shoot? Everything was shadow, flash and blur. He decided that since nobody in the vicinity deserved to live as it was, he’d concentrate on the shadow and blur and open fire.

  Shots rang out one after another, with no space between explosions; then with careful count and two magazines almost spent, a single bullet in each gun, Brent listened. The night had no more violence in it, there was only to the retreating sound of engines. Even in his delirium, he could tell there were only two. A bike stood, headlight still shining on the entrance of the bar. A body slumped by its side, one of the unlucky blurs, Brent thought.

  He didn’t know that he’d actually granted the biker’s wish. Sean was finally dead. His arms were in an awkward embrace over the neck of the bike, his last gasp of air was filled with warm exhaust.

  Brent whirled on the door, pointing both smoking guns in its direction. Burly leaned out, “Don’t shoot.”

  “You set me up.” Brent yelled.

  A chuckle from the doorway. “You’re not very smart are you GI Joe?”

  Brent wasn’t sure about what made sense in the tense moments that followed, and he wouldn’t be for quite some time. Burly detected the uncertainty in the air, “There’s a saying in these parts: If you can’t trust a man with a shotgun pointed at you, who can you trust?” He pumped a shell into the chamber.

  Brent took a second to clear a thick wall of cobwebs that separated his judgment from his perceptions. He realized that the fat bartender was right, if he’d wanted him dead, he wouldn’t be talking to him. Brent lowered the weapons and as his vision began to clear he realized that he was pointing at the window rather than the door anyway.

  Burly was lifting him to his feet the next moment. The air was silent, consumed in darkness. Brent lost track of the time that Burly had gone down and turned off the motorcycle and headlight. The next thing Brent knew he was sitting in a chair in the bar, pulling bloody napkins from an old chrome holder. He knew logically that the napkins were not coming out bloody, but he could have sworn that they actually spat from the holder pre-soaked in a glistening deep ruby stream. Brent’s life became like a slide show seen through a muddy red lens. He was fighting the welcoming blackness with everything he had. Brent had to get up that mountain and warn Legacy that he’d lost containment, and with that thought, he pushed himself to his feet, or tried to. The next instant, he was lying on a broken table. All of those bloody napkins couldn’t be his, could they?